


climbing to the light

by with_the_monsters



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Resurrection, M/M, TW: Suicide, Temporary Character Death, in a way?? i guess, tw: mentions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2013-06-23
Packaged: 2017-12-15 22:38:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/854785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/with_the_monsters/pseuds/with_the_monsters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>two threads, running intertwined throughout history. dipped low in elysium or rising to run bloody along the streets of the waking world. two constants in a never-ending ocean of change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	climbing to the light

**Author's Note:**

> I had a request on tumblr from an anonymous user for e/R, and this happened. Sorry if it's more depressing than you were hoping for!

Dust. Dirt. Despair. The heavy weight of armour dragging him down into the blood-soaked sand. He sees the spear rise, watches it fall, blossoms with agony.

He dies there like a dog beneath the walls of Troy, and the only word on his lips is “Achilles”.

 

……

 

The sun sets on the world when news of his death comes. He tears at his face, pulls at his hair, tries to set the day alight with sorrow. Violence is his trade so he takes it up to wreak vengeance.

Hector trembles before him like a lamb brought to the slaughter. All he sees in his face is Patroclus’ death played a thousand times over.

“Please,” Hector begs, “Grant me this. Let my family take my body when I am dead.”

 _Patroclus_ , Achilles thinks, and his response snarls through the air between them like the strike of a snake.

“There are no bargains between lions and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.”

But not even the death of Hector, tamer of horses, can wash the grief away.

(Paris’ arrow is the greatest blessing he has ever known. A hand stretched through the darkness, leading him towards Patroclus waiting in the shadows.)

 

-

 

 _Again_. The surprise is almost greater than the pain. He, no true warrior, slain in the midst of war with countless other soldiers. The irony is almost incomprehensible.

He howls as he hits the bloody ground. To be torn away so soon, so young. There have not been nights enough to feel his skin, days enough to learn his heart in all its innumerable complexities.

It’s a different name on his lips, but the man is the same again.

“Alexander!”

 

……

 

His nails come away bloody from his cheeks. How can it be so? To have lost him yet again, to another man’s sword, to have not been there to save him.

Alexander lasts six months, and then only because his empire demands it of him. But even that sprawling glorious thing cannot tether him, and he slips away in the night.

Hephaistion calls, and Alexander answers.

 

-

 

To lose him first – how can it be so? This time was supposed to be different. He is successful, he was born into a glorious legacy and somehow managed to uphold it. He found him amongst a crowd, picked him out with the most grateful of smiles and brought him home to his heart. He loved him and cherished him and revelled in the quiet rebellion in his truculent grin.

He destroys eight rooms of his palace before he burns himself out and collapses onto the floor, the marble cool as death against his forehead.

They dare to lead him away three hours later, and all he can say is, “He was so _young_.”

Because this time is different, and he is part of something greater, he does not follow him down although the temptation claws at him every second that passes. He deifies him instead, scatters him across the globe that he might live on in all the corners of the empire.

He is every single star in the sky, and Hadrian would climb to them all if he could.

 

……

 

Death by drowning is curiously peaceful, but it breaks his heart in every way. His is a life of fire and ice, all extremes at once. To succumb to water and strong hands holding his head down is the cruellest trick the fates have played yet, and oh how many they have played.

The bubbles that rush out from his mouth are accompanied by a single blurry word.

“Hadrian.”

His stalwart companion, the steady shadow of two lifetimes already. To have been, for once, in his thrall, to have followed _him_ , for once. The novelty made it so much better. He hopes, as the life flees him, that his other soul will find that strength in some other life.

 

-

 

They pass two lives without meeting, trapped inconsequential at opposite corners of the globe.

The first dreams of golden boys with echelons of Icarus about them.

The second dreams of quiet steady smiles and the greater good, because some things cannot change.

 

-

 

They do not find each other again for nearly two thousand years, and then it’s been so long one does not remember.

Grantaire finds him like waking from a dream, and a forest fire starts amongst the cold dead trees in his heart. But Achilles, Alexander, Antinous – he does not recognise him. There is no flicker, no knowledge, no awareness of centuries spent in each other’s arms, hearts, souls.

He follows him all the places he goes, of course. That is how their story reads. Perhaps the reversal, when he was born as Hadrian and Enjolras Antinous – perhaps that is what forced them apart so long. The world does not like to be surprised in this way.

That’s where the drinking comes from. The agony of looking at him every single day and seeing that still he does not know him. He wakes each morning trying to hope that it will happen today.

It does not.

He is almost glad to die, in the end.

 

……

 

He remembers as the first bullet strikes, and that is perhaps the worst thing of all. There are all the names he has ever carried on his lips, a warm familiar hand in his, and the agony of death makes him want to scream.

After all this time, and he does not even know him until they are both dead men.

How impossibly, agonisingly cruel. This is not living, these strange recurring lives of theirs. Not a series of rebirths. Just of redeaths.

 

-

 

For nearly two centuries this pattern continues.

The worst are the world wars, where they meet both times in their dying moments.

World War I, Grantaire is the English soldier dying in the mud. Enjolras the German who shoots him and crawls to say a prayer for him once he is gone. They cannot even speak the same language to say goodbye.

World War II, they find each other in adjacent hospital beds. Grantaire missing a leg, Enjolras with blood seeping through the bandage around his head. They are wide-eyed, wild, shivering still with phantoms of screaming shells.

The nurse finds them both passed on forty minutes later, holding hands in the narrow gap between the blood-slick beds.

 

-

 

The next time they have six glorious years. Grantaire sees him at the front of a meeting, pacing back and forth in front of a frothing crowd, stirring them up to a sea-storm frenzy.

“You,” Enjolras weeps that night when Grantaire breaks into his flat.

“Me,” he agrees, and talking doesn’t seem important after that.

Fast forward six years, and a trusted lieutenant brings Grantaire the final wasting news. He is dead, starved on hunger strike in prison. His last chance at defiance. The IRA is already regrouping, they want Grantaire’s help with new plans, with revenge attacks.

Grantaire excuses himself and walks the Dublin streets for eight hours. Then he goes back to their house, locates Enjolras’ revolver in a back drawer of a desk and – well, the rest never goes down in history.

 

-

 

It happens one last time. Grantaire is sat in a twenty-first century coffee shop on an unremarkable street in Paris, nose-deep in a book. He is lonely and bored and that age-old aptitude for self-destruction is beginning to rear its head.

And then long dear fingers push his book down, a love-warm face appears, and the whole world stops dead in its tracks.

“This is the one,” Enjolras says, the greeting as simple as that, “Can’t you _feel_ it?”

Somehow, Grantaire can.


End file.
